At the end of this module you will be able to:

• Manage intrapreneurs the right way
• Know about the organizational conditions influencing intrapreneurs
• Recognize challenges to intrapreneurship promotion

The organizational context affects the success of the intrapreneur as well. Your organization has the power to support or hinder an intrapreneur's efforts.

The management's support is essential for employees who want to engage in intrapreneurial activities by: 

• motivating employees,
• recognizing their activities involve some risk-taking,
• establishing a norm within the company.

The flexibility of the organization, the flow of information within the organization, and the centralization of decision-making are all considered aspects of organizational structure.

• Intrapreneurship is positively correlated with open communication channels and the provision of processes that allow ideas to be assessed, chosen, and implemented. 
• Formalization is positively correlated with both job satisfaction and self-efficacy. 
• Keep in mind that some norms and processes might also prevent intrapreneurship.

• More intrapreneurial activities occur when employees are given the opportunity to develop their own work and the decision-making process is decentralized. 
• Additionally, autonomy raises workers' levels of self-efficacy, which is a must for intrapreneurs.

• Rewards should be consistent with objectives and based on performance. 
• Rewards make employees more eager to take part in creative projects. 
• Rewards improve commitment and are also predictors of job satisfaction.

• Supplying the appropriate resources has an advantage in addition to managerial support, organizational structure, autonomy, rewards, and reinforcements. 
• These resources include both time and money. 
• REMEMBER! The quality of time is more significant than the quantity of time, particularly during the investigation period, when it is not always obvious what tasks the intrapreneur should take on. 

It might be challenging to manage creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial individuals. It has less to do with getting people to work hard or achieving deadlines and more to do with getting the most out of them and keeping them motivated. 

No matter how effective your plan is, it can always be improved. For an intrapreneur, learning never stops—whether it's about improving your professional skills, your personal or business development, time management, or your life quality. Always be aware of tasks that take too long or require too much of your attention, and work to simplify or improve them for your intrapreneur. 

Now, we will examine the various elements of this type of personnel management and examine strategies for extracting the most out of your employees.

It is necessary to build intrapreneurship as a distinct system that could be created and offered to those looking to take on new challenges.

If it is not integrated into the innovation plan, it will be rapidly dismissed as "simply another experiment."

“This wouldn't attract the right kind of person because it conveys a lack of commitment, so budding intrapreneurs stay undercover or are on the lookout for ways to leave so they can pursue their own goals and aspirations.”

The most important factors are strong executive support, fostering an entrepreneurial culture, and recognizing the right people to hire. 

• The caliber of any ideas, 
• the mission associated with those ideas, 
• the funding requirements, 
• the milestones that must be met, and 
• the transparency of failure and all that entails. 

Each of these turns into a crucial enabler for the success of intrapreneurs.

These qualities require care and encouragement, which is where a clear mentor comes in:

This person (the mentor) must act as “air cover”, that is;

• assist the entrepreneur in overcoming challenges presented by the parent corporation, 
• maintain a high degree of trust throughout all decisions and progress. 

The intrapreneur eventually becomes more dependent on relationships than the implementation of processes. Both the job and the relationships require ongoing commitment.

First and foremost, don't try to manage creative individuals at all! Instead, try to behave more like a mentor. Think of your collaboration with your innovators and intrapreneurs as a team effort, similar to that of co-workers on a common project.

The best relationships are based on openness and cooperation, like most partnerships. 

Your team will believe that you are actually cooperating to achieve a common objective if you can persuade them to be completely honest and transparent with you and each other.

Be available to offer guidance and assistance as needed. Help the team get rid of obstacles, navigate corporate politics, and influence gatekeepers.

Above all, mentor them to build their entrepreneurial skill set systematically.

Keep in mind that you are no longer managing. You don't instruct others on how or what to do. The project is not under your control. To prevent things from spiraling out of control: 

Establish clear objectives with your intrapreneurs, which they can support and agree into. 

Working with intrapreneurs will likely lead you to discover that they typically set much higher objectives for themselves than you would have. 

This means that your job as their "boss" will likely require convincing them to establish more realistic, doable goals than they would have on their own without diminishing their ambitions.

Then what?

When you agree a set of goals, you should make sure to include:

• an agreed budget
• an overall vision for the project
• some specific metrics to measure progress, and
• a review period – the point when you both agree you will sit down together and review progress

then back off and let them finish their work (unless they ask for your assistance). 

You must let the team to act independently and make mistakes, even though it may not seem natural. Remember they WILL make mistakes! Which leads us neatly on to the next point…

Just accept it! Any intrapreneurial project will inevitably experience a certain amount of failure. Your role is to assist the team in getting ready for failure.

Intrapreneurs must be upbeat and confident in their theories. They don't have a natural ability to anticipate issues, so when the inevitable occurs, they could lose hope.

Talk about what could go wrong as the intrapreneur's advisor. Discuss the situation and the team's potential responses to failure. Encourage profitable failure, that is; a failure that the group can learn from and apply to enhance their concept.

1. Make sure you stick to your agreed review times if you want to properly hold your intrapreneurs accountable. 

2. Utilize such reviews to strengthen your position as a trustworthy advisor. 

3. Try to think as a VC would. If you still believe that the initiative has opportunity and potential, decide on new objectives and funding while gently guiding the team in the proper path.

4. If you believe the project has reached its conclusion, it is your job to terminate it and assist your intrapreneurs in moving on to their next endeavor. 

5. Never penalize your intrapreneurs if a project doesn't work out. The majority of intrapreneurial efforts actually fail. Failure is a great way to learn and improve!

1. To ensure that the team has different levels of creative, innovative, and design freedom.

2. To ensure that the team can challenge and question the current model in order to succeed.

3. To recognize the line between being brave and being foolish. 

4. To understand the limits of risk yet having the ability to seize a genuine opportunity.

5. To identify strategies for keeping all intrapreneurs motivated, encouraged, and focused on the reward, the opportunity, and their contribution to the goals.

6. To remain informed and to make the work visible so that others can participate, offer assistance, and provide support.

7. Create methodologies and frameworks that are grounded on the organizational value and alignment.

8. Recognize that what you are working on is commercially vital and that decisions will frequently be based on pragmatic, rather than opportunist or idealistic factors. Performance will be reviewed, most likely under a tougher spotlight than for others. Accept it as a necessary component of the job.

9. Refrain from entering the mainstream, and even question whether this should go through the traditional processes. 

10. To ensure that the management is flexible and dynamic, ensuring that mistakes are acceptable as long as they are learned from and kept within the parameters of the risk profile.

Well done! Now you know more about:

• Organizational conditions influencing intrapreneurship
• Strategies for managing intrapreneurs
• Mentoring intrapreneurs the right way
• Challenges and remedies to promote intrapreneurship